Centuries of Gold and Shadow

SPAIN AT THE LOUVRE

Spanning from the splendour of an empire on which the sun never set to the brutal conflicts of the 20th century, all the way to the explosive La Movida movement, which involved composers among many Spanish artists, five centuries of Spanish music unfold before us, showcasing the exultation of song, the power of the piano and the beauty of the viola da gamba and the guitar.

Wednesday 7 October 2026, 8:00 p.m.
Cantoría Ensemble – directed by Jorge Losana
The music of Zurbarán
The star vocal ensemble of the new generation of Spanish Baroque music is making its debut on the Louvre stage in honour of the opening of the exhibition ‘Zurbarán’, with a performance curated to highlight the brilliance of Spanish music at the end of the Golden Age.

Wednesday 25 November 2026, 8:00 p.m.
Arcángel – Quatuor Diotima:
Contemporary flamenco 
(Mauricio Sotelo, Ondřej Adámek and Maurice Ravel)
Beyond folklore, the structures that underlie flamenco also inspire today’s composers, both in Spain with Mauricio Sotelo and throughout Europe with Ondřej Adámek. Arcángel, one of the greatest cantaores of his generation, and Quatuor Diotima, an ensemble highly sought after for their 20th- and 21st-century musical repertoire, set out to prove the continued influence of flamenco.

Friday 4 December 2026, 8:00 p.m.
Tanguy de Williencourt: 
From Zurbarán to Goya 
(Enrique Granados and Federico Mompou)
One of the most fascinating and versatile pianists in the French music industry today, Tanguy de Williencourt pays homage to the Louvre’s Goya paintings with Enrique Granados’s Goyescas, and evokes Zurbarán’s mysticism with the passages from Federico Mompou’s Música Callada that were inspired by his paintings.

Wednesday 13 January 2027, 8:00 p.m.
Jordi Savall and Hespèrion XXI
Seville: Many Worlds and Many Seas 
(Diego Ortiz, Gaspar Sanz, Francisco Guerrero, Santiago de Murcia)
A living legend in the field of early Iberian music, Jordi Savall returns to the viola da gamba, of which he is a lyrical master, in the intimate midst of a chamber ensemble selected from his orchestra, Hespèrion XXI. As is his wont, Savall takes us on an extraordinary musical journey, travelling through time from the Arab origins of Spanish music to its evolutions in the Americas.

Friday 22 January 2027, 8:00 p.m.
¡Thibaut Garcia y sus amigos! 
(Isaac Albéniz, Manuel Quiroga)
To close the exhibition ‘Zurbarán’, Thibaut Garcia, the rising star of French classical guitar, joins a number of his friends (including guitarist Antoine Morinière and cellist Jérémy Garbarg, member of Quatuor Arod) for a Spanish neo-Baroque party, featuring a few of Isaac Albéniz and Manuel Quiroga’s most sensitive, scintillating works. 

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In conjunction with the exhibitions ‘Zurbarán’ and ‘Sculpting Colour’.

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With the generous support of Acción Cultural Española